Wimbledon goes for gold but tennis chiefs still net criticism

This is a golden era for tennis. Not only is the 2012 Wimbledon Championships
being fought over by three of the greatest players of all time – Roger
Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic – but the game is awash with cash.

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The Lawn Tennis Association, which manages tennis in Britain, posted record revenues of £69.5m in 2011, including surplus profits from Wimbledon of £35.2m.Photo: AFP

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Baker is the former chief executive of Alliance Boots who oversaw its £11bn sale to KKR. He was brought on to the LTA board in 2010 to bring a business perspective and commercial rigour.

The courts at Wimbledon are expected to be packed when the Championships starts today and throughout the next fortnight.

The Lawn Tennis Association, which manages tennis in Britain, posted record revenues of £69.5m in 2011, including surplus profits from Wimbledon of £35.2m.

But despite this financial success amid economic uncertainty, all is not well within British tennis.

The LTA has been described as a "total shambles" in the House of Lords, had its funding cut by Sport England because of falling levels of participation across the country, and badly missed targets set in 2006 to get five British players inside the world top 100.

For Richard Baker, independent non-executive of LTA, it is therefore an interesting time

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Baker is the former chief executive of Alliance Boots who oversaw its £11bn sale to KKR. He was brought on to the LTA board in 2010 to bring a business perspective and commercial rigour.

The financial figures suggest he has been a success - but the sporting figures suggest it may have come at the expense of British tennis making progress.

"Our job is to sustain and grow British tennis in its entirety. Our job is to strengthen and nurture the game," concedes Baker. "We are not here to make money for Andy Murray."

However, he says the commercial performance of the LTA is proof it is not failing.

"We have had a four-fold increase in commercial revenues during the longest ever recession – is that a shambles organisation?" he asks during an interview at the multi-million pound National Tennis Centre in Roehampton, south west London. "I don't' think we are doing a bad job."

The LTA has expanded commercial revenues thanks primarily to a major sponsorship deal with Aegon that combined a number of commercial agreements into a single partnership. The insurance group is now the lead sponsor for all the LTA tournaments in the UK, such as Queen's.

This deal has protected the LTA financially as well as meet its desire to protect the integrity of the sport and the distinctiveness of its leading events. Wimbledon, which the LTA runs with the All England Tennis Club, remains free of sponsorship logos and its matches remain on free-to-air television.

Baker initially became involved in the LTA in 2010 when Val Gooding, the former chief executive of Bupa and the LTA's other non-executive director, suggested he apply for the vacant role.

"I have been a sports nut and particularly a tennis enthusiast all my life," says Baker, who even met his wife at a tennis club in Ealing.

"I am a sample of what the LTA is all about – tennis player, tennis fan, and tennis parent."

Baker is also the chairman of Virgin Active and furniture group DFS and a non-executive director at Costa Coffee owner Whitbread.

However, at the LTA he now faces responsibilities that go beyond the financial performance of an organisation.

Baroness Billingham, chair of the All Party Tennis Group and a long-time critic of the LTA, last month called on Sports Minister Hugh Robertson to launch an urgent review of British tennis after calling the LTA a "total shambles" for its failure to boost the number of people who play tennis, the lack of success of those who do, and lack of transparency as to how it spends its money.

Baker takes immediate issue with accusations that the LTA lacks transparency, claiming it is at "the leading edge of sports governance" and has a board structure similar to a FTSE 100 company, including a new independent chairman who is due to be appointed later this year.

"For anyone who cares to look the information is there," he says of the LTA's spending. In the 2011 annual report, for example, the £69.5m spent by the LTA was broken down as £21.6m in boosting participation through building new courts, £12m on elite performance, £19.3m on events such as the Aegon Championships at Queen's Club, and £16.6m on "servicing British tennis".

The final category includes remuneration for LTA staff, rumoured to total over £10m and £400,000 for Roger Draper the chief executive.

Baker says the LTA now plans to publish more information about pay. "Individually, no-one wants it [having their salary made public]," he explains. "I never particularly enjoyed it at Boots. But if you are a publicly incorporated company, which we now are, you have to play by the rules."

However, it is more difficult for Baker to dismiss criticism of the LTA for falling tennis participation and a lack of elite success.

Sport England, the Government body which distributes taxpayer funds to sports, has cut the LTA's annual funding by £530,000 after it found the number of people playing tennis once a week fell from 530,900 in 2009 to 375,800 in 2011, a drop of almost 30pc. At the same time, Britain is still looking for its first male Wimbledon champion since Fred Perry in 1936.

Baker says the LTA "takes it on the chin and as a call to do better", but he also believes the organisation is making progress that is not reflected in the Sport England statistics.

The LTA says it has invested almost £30m since 2006 into 303 nationwide projects to build new courts and it now claims there are more than 600 places to play free tennis in the country.

"If you walk around there are quite a lot of courts," claims Baker. "But it is not particularly an easy game to start. If you just turn up with a racquet and ball you are going to have quite a rubbish game."

With this in mind, the LTA is focused on programmes to encourage sustained interest in playing tennis. These include a form of tennis for children played on smaller courts, called mini tennis, and "cardio tennis", which allows casual players to hit balls as a group while music is playing.

The LTA's own statistics claim this is working, with a 12pc increase on the number of members of registered tennis venues to 576,000 in the last year.

However, it is a long-term project, as is overhauling the youth set-up at the top level of British tennis to try to create more Andy Murrays and the next Fred Perry.

Baker, though, says there is "step change" going on in junior tennis with an unprecedented number of young Brits reaching the upper echelons of the world rankings. Last year, for the first time ever, Britain won the Junior Davis Cup.

"We are three or four years from providing a clutch of good, professional players," Baker adds.

If this forecast proves accurate, then the LTA will have real ammunition to fight the critics. If not, then there will be little sympathy in the UK with another false dawn.

"Some of the things that we seeded in the ground six years ago are growing," Baker adds. "Tennis will be in a healthy state in five or six years. We won't be blown off course by a few silly people making silly comments."